{"id":21284,"date":"2016-02-21T09:05:17","date_gmt":"2016-02-21T17:05:17","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/spijue.wpengine.com\/news\/anchorage-men-charged-with-pointing-gun-at-federal-marshal\/"},"modified":"2016-02-21T09:05:17","modified_gmt":"2016-02-21T17:05:17","slug":"anchorage-men-charged-with-pointing-gun-at-federal-marshal","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/news\/anchorage-men-charged-with-pointing-gun-at-federal-marshal\/","title":{"rendered":"Anchorage men charged with pointing gun at federal marshal"},"content":{"rendered":"

ANCHORAGE <\/strong>– Two 26-year-old Anchorage men were indicted Thursday on charges of assaulting a deputy federal marshal.<\/p>\n

Leigaga Amituanai and Sulu Faamolemole were indicted on felony charges stating that they pointed a shotgun at the marshal while the marshal was doing surveillance work on Anchorage\u2019s east side.<\/p>\n

Amituanai\u2019s lawyer, federal assistant public defender Darrel Gardner, said he could not comment so early in the case. A message left for Faamolemole\u2019s attorney, Danee Pontious, was not immediately returned.<\/p>\n

According to the criminal complaint, a deputy federal marshal, whose name was redacted, on the morning of Feb. 11 was conducting surveillance with the marshals service fugitive task force.<\/p>\n

The officer was in the driver\u2019s seat of an unmarked government vehicle backed into a parking space at a commercial building.<\/p>\n

At about 10:35 a.m., the marshal saw a pickup with two men approaching in the parking lot from his left side. The pickup was creeping along at just 2-3 mph.<\/p>\n

The marshal said the men stared at him, leaned forward, gestured and appeared to say something though windows in both vehicles were closed.<\/p>\n

As the pickup passed in front of the marshal from 10 to 15 feet away, the passenger, later identified as Amituanai, lifted a sawed-off shotgun from his lap, pushed the gun against the window and pointed it at the marshal while continuing to stare at him, according to the marshal.<\/p>\n

The driver, later identified as Faamolemole, leaned forward and appeared to speak toward the marshal, the marshal reported.<\/p>\n

The marshal radioed others on the surveillance team and followed the truck into the parking lot of a grocery store. An Anchorage police squad car pulled up behind the pickup and activated its emergency lights.<\/p>\n

The truck sped down a steep embankment that leads to the Glenn Highway and hit a tree. The truck backed up, moved forward, nearly hit a car on the highway and was stopped by other officers on a side street.<\/p>\n

Amituanai and a female passenger were detained in the truck. The driver fled on foot but was captured by police.<\/p>\n

Investigators with a search warrant seized a shotgun, a loaded handgun and ammunition in the truck. The female was found with several shotgun shells in her jacket.<\/p>\n

Amituanai and Faamolemole remained in custody Friday.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

ANCHORAGE – Two 26-year-old Anchorage men were indicted Thursday on charges of assaulting a deputy federal marshal. Leigaga Amituanai and Sulu Faamolemole were indicted on felony charges stating that they pointed a shotgun at the marshal while the marshal was doing surveillance work on Anchorage\u2019s east side. Amituanai\u2019s lawyer, federal assistant public defender Darrel Gardner, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":107,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_stopmodifiedupdate":false,"_modified_date":"","wds_primary_category":4,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[230],"yst_prominent_words":[],"class_list":["post-21284","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news","tag-state-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21284","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/107"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=21284"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21284\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=21284"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=21284"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=21284"},{"taxonomy":"yst_prominent_words","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/yst_prominent_words?post=21284"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}